A team of UNL faculty has received one of six grants from Microsoft to study the role of technology in human trafficking.
The UNL project will focus on identifying the role of online advertising in child sex trafficking in the United States. The goal is to take a crucial step forward in combating domestic minor sex trafficking by identifying the role of the Internet in child sex trafficking and the clandestine language used in web advertising to facilitate child sex trafficking, and conceptualizing intelligent software to identify online advertising of child sex for sale.
Principal investigators for the project are: Dwayne Ball, associate professor of marketing; Anna Shavers, professor of law; Sriyani Tidball, lecturer in advertising and public relations; and Matt Waite, professor of practice in journalism and mass communications. David Keck, director of the Raikes School of Computer Science and Management and professor of business administration and computer science and engineering is an investigator on the project.